Scrums: The problem with the next PBO

It was on his third question Wednesday that New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair decided to touch on the topic of the next Parliamentary Budget Officer.

“We have just found out that another Conservative party hatchet man, the chief of staff to the Government House leader, has been named to the committee to choose the next PBO who will finally be acceptable to the Conservative party,” Muclair told the House, drawing the circle for everyone. “Does he really think Canadians will put up with that?”

Peter Van Loan, the Government House leader in question, stood to reply and offered that Mulcair was “quite wrong.” What Mulcair was wrong about, however, remains unknown, for Van Loan then only told the House that the process that is being followed to select the next PBO “is exactly the same process that was followed before,” and one enshrined in the Parliament of Canada Act.

He then went on to explain it was the Conservative government that created the position and that “we look forward to the appointment of an objective Parliamentary Budget Officer to provide advice to parliamentarians… so that we can make reasoned decisions on the proposals we are dealing with.”

This, here, is the sticking point, then: the objectivity of the next PBO.

Earlier in the day, Mulcair echoed former (and first) PBO, Kevin Page. He told reporters the process to find a new PBO ought to be restarted, knowing now that a political player from the Government House leader’s office was on the selection committee. Whoever it is that is eventually selected, he said, “will have zero credibility. That’s the problem.”

He’s right. It is exactly the problem – not just for the NDP or the other opposition parties, but also for us all. Here’s why: Let’s say the government does change in 2015. Are we to then sit through years of another government, of any ideological stripe, again constantly dismissing the PBO – this time on the grounds that they were selected under dubious circumstances, and therefore not credible? Do we want to give our government that excuse – the ability to simply ignore the future PBO and their work because they weren’t properly selected?

Is that what the Conservatives wanted?

Back in 2006, in its campaign platform (page 11), the Conservative party outlined its vision what it then called a Parliamentary Budgetary Authority. The description is very similar to that eventually enshrined in the Parliament of Canada Act, including the descriptor “independent.”

After question period Wednesday, the House voted on four bills. One, was C-476, Mulcair’s bill to reform the PBO to, among other things, make the position an officer of Parliament, further guaranteeing its independence. Not one single Conservative MP rose in favour of it.

Four years before coming up with the idea for the PBO, during a debate in the House in 2002, then-leader of the Opposition Stephen Harper criticized the Liberal government on its legacy.

“What is a legacy?” he asked the House, noting that the word was “bandied about a lot.” Creating a “real” legacy was part of the reason his party was formed, Harper told everyone.

“It was not the lure of power nor the attraction of the spotlight. It was not to pad our resumes, reward our friends or settle the family score,” Harper told the Commons. “It was to create something that will last, something that will offer tangible and enduring benefits to all Canadians. It was something that will leave our descendants better off and inspire them to attain greater success. That is what a legacy is. It is something that will last.”

One of those promised enduring benefits to Canada the Conservatives eventually promised was an independent, objective and accountable budgetary oversight office. That is what the Conservatives promised Canadians in successive elections, and that is what Van Loan again promised the House Wednesday, only an hour before everyone in his party voted against it. It is indeed a real legacy – of sorts.